Social Sound

Pop culture – ans specifically: music – is very present in Leeuwarden, the city in the Northern part of Holland, where I used to work as curator at art initiative VHDG. There’s the Academy for Pop Culture, there are festivals like ‘Welcome to the Village’ and ‘Explore the North’ + a lot of people enjoy singing in choirs in the province of Friesland. So, when I had to come up with an idea for a first project, I decided ‘music’ was a good topic. Also because I love music; I used to play guitar in a local band, I used to be part of the team of a local radio programme that broadcasted the latest indie music, I used to work at pop venue VERA (Groningen) for more than 5 years. So: music.

Social Sound is what I called the exhibition/project. Social Sound was about how music brings people together and what role music plays in our daily life.

Main part of Social Sound was the exhibition, which could be seen at De Blokhuispoort from 5th of January – 16th of February 2013. The Blokhuispoort is a former jailhouse, which now functions as creative hub. It’s located close to Leeuwarden Central Station.

Another part of Social Sound was the Sonic Restaurant, which was a concept of American artist David First. The Sonic Restaurant was located at the Zaailand shopping centre (close to Leeuwarden Central Station). In stead of serving food, it only served music. With his concept, First tries to bring people together via music. He tries to create this ‘shared-experience’, which you won’t get when sitting behind your computer and listening to music on your own. First came over to Leeuwarden especially for this project.

Next part of the project was a new version of the Complaints Choir, a concept of Finnish artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen. Kalleinen & Kochta-Kalleinen gave the inhabitants of Leeuwarden a voice, by letting them summit complaints via email, after which all comlaints where gathered by us and turned into a song, with the help of local composer Jaap Oosterwijk. The following 5 weeks, the song was practised with all people that send in a complaint, and eventually the song was song in public space of Leeuwarden, with the help of Oosterwijk and professional piano player Remko Wind.

Omrop Fryslan attended the performance of Complaints Choir Leeuwarden. The item was broadcasted on January 2013 in the K-rute programme.
Video is in Dutch.

On the 1st of February 2013 the Complaints Choir Leeuwarden performded in the city centre of Leeuwarden. Hereby the video registration of the performance. Video is in Dutch.

Collaboration with Academy for Pop Culture
Artists Elke Uitentuis & Nienke Jansen wanted to research ‘a new political sound’, a new form of musical protest, and collaborated with students of Academy for Pop Culture for this purpose. The artists wanted to research if they could create a new base for Dutch protest songs in Leeuwarden, with the help of the students. While at the same time an installation was present in the exhibition in De Blokhuispoort, in which Uitentuis & Jansen gave the audience via maps information about what kinds of protests had been organized in Leeuwarden in the past couple of decades, and where they where organized exactely and by whom.
In January 2013 Uitentuis & Jansen, with the help of Samuel Vriezen and Quinsy Gario, gathered with some students of Academy for Pop Culture, in order to research new forms of politcal protests. The outcome of the workshops could be heard in the public space of Leeuwarden at the end of January 2013.

Omroep Fryslan did an item about the workshop that artists Elke Uitentuis & Nienke Jansen organised for and with students of the Academy for Pop Culture (Leeuwarden). The item was broadcasted on the 30th of January 2013 in the K-Rute programme.

Merlijn Twaalfhoven
Next part of Social Sound was the performance organized by composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven. Twaalfhoven is very socially engaged, and succeeds in letting people experience music in a different way. His new project called ‘The Air we breathe’ was all about the human voice. It included singers with different cultural backgrounds, singing together with local amateurs. The performance was organinized on the 2nd of February 2013, at De Blokhuispoort.

Social Sound Radio
We also did make a radio programme, which was broadcasted live by local radio Station Zeilsteen Radio, which is also located at De Blokhuispoort. The radio programme was broadcasted on the 1st of February 2013.

– Evert Bisschop Boele: Associate Lector at Hanzehogeschool Groningen and Prins Claus Conservatorium, Groningen. Bisschop Boele’s specialisation is music as social practise and non-western music
– Remko Wind. piano player Complaints Choir Leeuwarden
– Jaap Oosterwijk, composer of the Complaints Choir Leeuwarden song
– artist Nienke Jansen together with one of the students of Academy for Pop Culture that took part in the workshop by Uitentuis & Jansen

There were performances by Zinkzand and Charlie Jones’ Big Band as well, broadcasted live via Zeilsteen radio.
One can re-listen to Social Sound radio: here.

Film programme
Social Sound included a film programme as well, curated by Mare van Koningsveld. The films could be seen at Academy for Pop Culture.
Films that were screened:

Opera-sing-along
Furthermore on Friday the 15th of February there was an Opera-sing-along by The Little Sisters of Gay Mutton.

Build your own snare instrument
Apart form that, on the 16th of February 2013 we organized a workshop by Yuri Landman. Landman is famous for building custom made guitars/ snare instruments for bands like Sonic Youth, dEUS, Blood Red Shoes.
During the workshop participants could build their own instrument. They could take the instruments home afterwards.

Educational workshop for children
And last but not least; we organized an educational workshop for children (by VJ-collective Nou & Herkauw).
Children had to come up with a story which had to be situated in a world full of noise. The main character had to go on a journey in a world which was inhabited by excentric creatures and people, all of whom were part of the country of “Klankenland”. The children not only had to come up with the story, but also had to make the sounds, for which they had to build their own instruments, made of scrap materials. But, they also had to visualize the story, making use of all kinds of technics. They a.o. used software programs like Animata, I-Stopmotion and Tagtool. Each scene got its own drawing, surrounding, characters and situation.
In the end everything came together and led to an animation.

PRESS
Social Sound got a lot of press attention. Leeuwarder Courant wrote 7 articles about the project. Friesch Dagblad wrote 1 article. Omrop Fryslan did a couple of radio/tv items about the project. Metropolis M did interview me, as did VPRO’s De Avonden. You can find the De Avonden radio interview : here
You can find the Metropolis M interview here.

Publication

In the publication a.o. an article about how artists make use of music by art critic Lilian Bense. Jan Pier Brands (at that point lecturer at Academy for Pop Culture, Leeuwarden. Now – 2018 – director of WORM, Rotterdam) wrote a piece about how the Academy for Pop Culture functions. Ad Vingerhoets & Waldie Hanser contributed an essay about how music literally changes our perception. Ellen Dissanayake wote about the original function of music. Philippus Zandstra wrote about the Leeuwarder music scene. Philosopher/musician Frank Meester wrote about his own history as a musician. Toon Fibbe wrote about the critical potential of opera. And so on. The graphic design of the publication (and of the project as a whole) was done by Enkeling & Erikenik.